Looking from Canada to the United States, across Niagara's Horseshoe Falls

Monday, January 16, 2012

Smitherman's Liberal stench still haunts Ontario

Martin Regg Cohn in the Toronto Star, Jan.11, 2012, noted how that disastrous former Liberal hack George Smitherman's festering turds are still smelling throughout Ontario.
Earlier on it was David Caplan who found Smitherman's piles of eHealth shit sticking to him; then we had Smitherman's secretive multi-billion-dollar GreenFear-instigated Samsung deal; now it's Deb Matthews' turn to wipe Smitherman's droppings from her shoes, dealing with the air ambulance fiasco, which has Smitherman's stench all over it, though FuriousDiaperman claims he had nothing to do with this dump:

"...Last month, infuriated by a series of Star articles, she [Matthews] sidelined the charismatic Chris Mazza from his perch as CEO — he of the egregious $1.4 million annual income.This week, she swept aside the rest of that legacy by bouncing the interim ORNGE president and the entire board. The affiliated Ornge Global Solutions — whose questionable side deals were shrouded in secrecy — will be wound down.Matthews is not covered in glory here, nor are the Liberals. The government ignored persistent opposition questioning for months, and it took sustained coverage in the Star to ratchet up the pressure.But she has acted decisively against an organization that was midwifed by her government and is still heavily staffed by Liberal insiders. Mazza’s rise to power at ORNGE came courtesy of former health minister George Smitherman, who eagerly embraced his vision for a privatized air ambulance service. As with ORNGE, Smitherman’s fingerprints are also on eHealth — another notorious political albatross that Matthews inherited.But in retirement, Smitherman refuses to wear any of this, blaming his successors for dropping the ball and insisting he would never have let things get out of hand. In an 800-word letter-to-the-editor published online last month, he lashed out at the Liberal government.“That the ministry did not conduct proper oversight, and did not (as of two days ago) understand what was happening at ORNGE, is a commentary on my successors and the ministry,” he argued. “The lack of a defence of the Ontario Air Ambulance service shows a withering backbone that day in and day out becomes a more prominent feature of the current government.”...
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Smitherman will probably also deny that he had anything to do with the NHS's HIP; that it was all solely somehow Harris' fault... oh, and Debbie Sevenpifer's... but certainly neither he nor his LHIN had anything to do with it!!
And, so what about that continuing C.difficile outbreak in Niagara in 2011-12? Only 40 patients dead?! What's that got to do with Smitherman's secretive Liberals in 2008 quashing a C.difficile public inquiry, at a time when hundreds of C. diff patients died in Ontario?
Cohn could look into that, seeing as that Niagara's local Liberal friendly press couldn't be bothered to.
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By Jan.19, 2012, the CBC and CTV were reporting about 4 alleged deaths in relation to ORNGE.
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